Thailand’s PM front runner Pita confident of surviving move to thwart leadership bid

BANGKOK – Thailand’s prime ministerial front runner

Pita Limjaroenrat

on Tuesday played down an effort to disqualify him over a stock ownership issue, insisting he had violated no rules and that rivals were determined to keep him from the top job.

Buoyed by massive youth support behind its anti-establishment, anti-monopoly agenda, Mr Pita’s progressive Move Forward Party was

the surprise winner of May’s election

, which saw army proxies thrashed in a resounding rejection of nine years of conservative, military-backed rule.

Some rival politicians have petitioned the election commission alleging that Mr Pita owned 42,000 shares in media firm iTV Public Company, which ran a mainstream television channel from 1998 before it lost its broadcast concession in 2007.

Election candidates are prohibited from holding shares in a media company. Mr Pita maintains, however, that iTV’s loss of its concession means it cannot be considered a mass media organisation.

“There is an attempt to keep me out of politics,” he told reporters on Tuesday, adding that he transferred the shares to his relatives in May.

“I am very confident that I am not unfit to run for office and to be a candidate for prime minister,” he said, referring to candidate qualifications.

Mr Pita, 42, has said that the shares were part of his late father’s estate, which he had declared to the anti-graft agency.

The election commission’s chairman said at the weekend that the complaints were being examined and further evidence was being gathered. It can either reject them, or forward them to the Constitutional Court.

The party’s predecessor, Future Forward, was on the wrong end of two of the court’s rulings in 2019 and 2020 on similar issues, with leader and prime ministerial candidate Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit disqualified for holding media shares and the party later disbanded over a campaign funding violation.

The issue underlines the challenges ahead for United States-educated Mr Pita in delivering on

his sweeping reform promises

, which could put Move Forward on a collision course with the royalist military and a powerful, old-money business elite.

Mr Pita has formed an alliance with seven other parties but faces an uphill battle to woo members of an unelected, conservative-leaning Senate to back him in a legislative vote on a prime minister, which is expected by August. REUTERS